Tag: sunset

WWM 2019: Days 20-26

#WorldWatercolorMonth2019 is flying by!  It has been a lot of fun, in the doing, pondering interpreting the prompts, and in the progress made from just daily painting.  I have some really awful paintings, and some of which I am rather proud.  So, with no further ado, the prompts and the paintings!

WWM #20:  Buildings

Here, some old buildings in Paris at sunset.  I am rather pleased about this watercolor for a few reasons.  Perspective works, with decreasing detail, lines, and atmosphere.  The sky is pretty killer, too!

WWM #21:  Patterns

I was pondering this one – I thought of all sorts of patterny things, but in reality, nothing grabbed me.  As my studio – particularly the sewing area – is in total disarray, sewing patterns suddenly seemed perfectly obvious.

WWM #22:  Rain Forest

I always imagine a rain forest as the French primitive painter Henri Rousseau showed it. The above is a rather poor homage to his great imaginings.

Here, from some photos and memories of our trip to the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State. Paths wander beneath ancient cedar trees covered with moss, a green canopy, and little if any sky visible.

WWM #23:  Beach Fun

Pales, buckets, and surfing at sunset – all great fun at the beach!

WWM #24:  Treats

Cookies!  I really love cookies (but like pie better, I admit), and for elegance and color and delightful flavor, macarons!  Here, lemon, mocha, pistachio, orange, and raspberry.

WWM #25:  Shades of Pink

I have to say, I like these raspberry macarons a lot!

WWM #26:  Natural Wonders

The White Sands National Monument in New Mexico is an amazing place – white sand dunes in the middle of a desert, scant plant life, dramatic skies and mountains all around.  It was also incredibly difficult to paint the whiteness of the sand . . . nothing particular awesome about my paintings.

On the other hand, the Arches National Monument has some amazing things to offer – arches being one.  The sandstone, eroded by wind and rain, has left some amazing geological remnants behind.  This watercolor really pleased me . . . again, perspective and distance issues, as well as my usual problems with conveying depth.  To do so, I simplified the background hills with a few lines of color.  I put more detail into the middle ground, which was the arch and the red sandstone behind the arch, and in front of it.  Plants on the lower corners and border became the foreground.  To aid more in the depth, I did a light blue-grey glaze over the mountains, and applied a warmer glaze a couple of times in different areas of the arch and sandstone.

To be continued!

Winter Sunset

I took this picture awhile back in the local botanical garden.  It is an oak against the sky, with the Santa Monica range in the distance.  In the photo, the tree is silhouetted against a yellow sky, and the foreground is mottled with dried grasses.  The California oak is not deciduous, but shows leaves year round.

The process here is along the lines of yesterday’s post, and is more successful I think.  It is very simple.  The steps I took began with a wash on the entire paper (8×10) in raw sienna.  The mountains on the left were done next using a bit of sap green with the raw sienna, followed by some cobalt blue for the darker range.  After that, the lower half of the painting had a wash of a greenish color, later followed with a darker green of sap green and cobalt blue.  The tree and brush in the center were of burnt sienna and cobalt, with perhaps a bit of ultramarine as well.

That’s it.  Fairly successful in moving from light to dark, general to specific.  The simplicity of the subject matter makes it an easy painting to do – yesterday’s fig tree through the window was more complex, and accordingly more difficult.  I really wonder if I will ever successfully paint complex scenes, such as a forest and creek or a city street filled with cars, people, buildings, and whatever – rather daunting, actually.